Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island (Mss. Gr. 41)

Biographical or Historical Information

Episcopal worship in Rhode Island dates to 1635 with the arrival in what is now Cumberland of the Rev. William Blackstone, an Anglican priest from Boston. An itinerant preacher, Blackstone preached regularly to Indians and settlers in a field beneath the "Catholic Oak" in Lonsdale. He also traveled astride a large white bull from settlement to settlement, stopping to preach and administer the sacraments whenever requested to do so. Blackstone built no churches, however, and Anglicans in Rhode Island continued to rely on itinerant priests to minister to their needs for the remainder of the seventeenth century.

It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the first Anglican Church was built in Rhode Island. In 1698, a small congregation in Newport petitioned Lord Bellomont, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, to assist it in obtaining a permanent minister. The application was approved and Trinity Church was built in 1701. It was followed shortly by St. Paul's in Narragansett (1707), St. Michael's in Bristol (1720), and King's Church, now St. John's, Cathedral, in Providence (1722).

Slow steady growth and the remarkably lengthy tenure of their ministers characterized the Anglican Churches in the colonial years. Rev. John Usher served St Michael's for 52 years (1723-1775); the Rev. James Honyman ministered to the congregation of Trinity Church for 46 years (1704-1750); and the great Protestant divines, Rev. James MacSparran and the Rev. Samuel Fayerweather, served St. Paul's for a total of 50 years between 1721 and 1774.

The coming of the American Revolution jeopardized this stability and the very existence of the Anglican Church in America. Prayers for the King of England and the royal family were included in the Anglican Prayer Book as part of the services. As tension between Great Britain and its American colonies increased, continued recitation of such prayers became a divisive issue between the clergy and their American congregations. The congregations insisted that prayers for the king be omitted from Sunday services and the clergy insisted on retaining them. As a result of this impasse, both King's Church in Providence and St. Paul's in Narragansett were closed for the duration of the Revolutionary War. In addition, St. Michael's in Bristol burned to the ground when British gunboats shelled the town in 1778. Only Trinity Church in Newport remained open throughout the Revolution and its congregation was deeply divided by the conflict.

By war's end the Anglican Church in America and Rhode Island was moribund. Churches had been closed or destroyed, congregations were divided, and clergy were holding services whenever and wherever possible in order to keep their flocks together. In 1789, however, three American bishops, including Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, met to form the House of Bishops of the newly organized Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

The following year, the Rev. William Smith of Trinity church in Newport, the Rev. Moses Badger of King's Church, Providence, and lay representatives of St. Michael's, Bristol and St. Paul's, Narragansett met in Newport to organize a Diocese of Rhode Island. On Nov. 18, 1790, the delegates to this first Diocesan Convention voted to create a diocese and named Samuel Seabury, Bishop of Connecticut, as the Bishop of Rhode Island. Seabury accepted and served as bishop of both dioceses until his death in 1796. Because of its small size and inability to support its own bishop, the Diocese of Rhode Island continued to share a bishop with one or more of the New England states until 1843 when the Diocese elected John Henshaw as the Bishop of Rhode Island.

King's Church in deference to patriotic sensibilities became St. John's Church in 1794 and the diocese continued its steady growth throughout the nineteenth century. By the time of the Diocesan Centennial in 1890, the diocese had grown from four parishes with approximately 200 communicants to thirty-five parishes with more than 9,000 communicants. The leadership of the diocese was very stable in it first century as well. Alexander Viets Griswold served as Bishop for thirty-two years (1811-43) and Thomas March Clark for forty-nine years (1854-1903).

The continued growth of the diocese into the twentieth century highlighted the growing need to have a cathedral as the administrative center and the religious focal point of the diocese. Bishop William McVickar first broached the issue in 1907 and was instrumental in forming a Cathedral Corporation two years later. It was not until 1929, however, that St. John's Church in Providence, the former King's Church, became the Cathedral of St. John and the seat of the diocese.

Over the next forty years, the Cathedral Close developed around the Cathedral of St. John as the diocese sought to bring together in one location its administrative and religious headquarters. Though plans for a Cathedral Close had been developed as early as 1931, it was not until John Seville Higgins became bishop in 1955 that the plans began to reach fruition. Higgins immediately announced a plan to move the diocesan office to the cathedral and to develop the block around the cathedral as the center of diocesan life. During the next 17 years under Bishop Higgins's leadership, the diocese completely restored the cathedral inside and out, constructed a new headquarters building, a parish house, and a fifty-two bed medical facility known as Hallworth House. The diocese also converted five homes it owned on Benefit Street into apartments for the elderly, built a Synod Hall in the basement of the cathedral, and converted the Chapel into a diocesan library named in honor of Nathan Bourne Crocker, the distinguished nineteenth century rector of St John's. By 1972, when Bishop Higgins retired, the Cathedral Close Project had been completed and the diocese had what Bishop James DeWolf Perry envisioned in his first address to the Diocesan Convention in 1911 as "a beautiful group of buildings and grounds as a witness to the religious motives which inspired the founder of the City."

In 1990, the Diocese of Rhode Island celebrated its two hundredth anniversary. The four colonial churches with barely 200 communicants had grown into a vibrant diocese of sixty-six parishes with more than 16,000 communicants. The church that had barely survived the upheaval of the American Revolution now plays a significant role in the religious, cultural, and social life of Rhode Island. As it looks back with pride on the accomplishments of its first two hundred years, the diocese also looks forward to the challenges of the next two hundred.

Bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island

• Samuel Seabury, 1790-1796
• No Bishop, 1797
• Edward Bass, 1798-1803
• No Bishop, 1804-1810
• Alexander Viets Griswold, 1811-1843
• John Prentiss Kenly Henshaw, 1843-1852
• No Bishop, 1853
• Thomas March Clark, 1854-1903
• William Neilson McVickar, 1903-1910
• James DeWolf Perry, 1911-1946
• Granville Gaylord Bennett, 1946-1954
• John Seville Higgins, 1955-1972
• Frederick Hesley Belden, 1972-1979
• George Nelson Hunt, 1980-